Vacuum stayed in storage.
Extreme humidity.
Vacuum stayed in basement.
Extreme neglect.
Belt broke on vacuum.
Big surprise.
Quote to fix vacuum.
Bigger surprise.
Time to buy new vacuum.

Once I got to that point, I was actually kind of excited. I was in a city this time and able to shop instead of buying something online that could be easily shipped to where we lived. However, one single day of going to just about every store in town that sold vacuums had me coming home in tears, utterly frustrated.

I mean when you buy a blender, are ya really worried about performance? You might be. You want it to crush ice for instance, but if it has the power to do that, they advertise it on the side of the box and you can feel relatively safe in picking one up. But all the vacuums claim to be the best on the side of the box. I had few ways to distinguish between them, besides knowing that I needed something more than the cheapest models but no where near the cadillac versions. Therein lay the frustration. Well, and the fact that Wal-mart doesn’t let you test drive vacuums. Oh and the fact that no two stores showed the same models. I never saw the same model twice. How can there possibly be so many vacuums in the world?!

I found an unusual friend in amazon.com. Did you know that people can review anything sold on their site? And thankfully – at least in this case – they sell a lot of stuff! I was able to look up several of the models being considered and hear what real people said about them. Vacuum reviews are amusing, in their own little way. People LOVE to talk about how much dust and dirt their new vacuum sucked up as a testimony to how wonderful their new machine is. They go on for paragraphs building up the suspense! When really it’s simply testimony to neglecting their own carpet. hehe

The best reviews were the ones where someone said tangible things like…

the hose was too short for my taste, or
the unit was too heavy, or
I had to change the filter this often when I vacuumed this much, or
the powered brush attachment worked/didn’t work as claimed.

I was pretty tickled because their observations helped me narrow the choices down to one machine. Which I bought and love but will spare you the story of how many times I emptied the dust bin on my first run through the house.

So… the whole reason why I’m telling this silly story is because I think this is an unusual but very helpful service you can give to another human being! To review a piece of electronics or household appliance on a free public website. So many consumer review sites that I looked up were by subscription only. Sad panda.

I exhort you. Be nice. Save someone’s day. Review something you love or hate or went “meh” over. Amazon or anywhere else that is free. Be an ordinary hero.

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